FTC Sues Dish Network For Violating Do Not Call List

A lawsuit has been filed against Dish Network by the U.S. Justice Department (on behalf of the FTC) alleging that the company violated “Do Not Call” rules by phoning potential customers without their permission.

According to the lawsuit, Dish violated the rules by encouraging its dealers to use robocallers.

In a statement, Dish said it can’t be “held responsible for Do Not Call violations by independent retailers.” The company said the FTC is “equating merely doing business with an independent retailer to ‘causing’ or ‘assisting and facilitating’ violations by that retailer.”

From Reuters:

“Because a few bad actors still don’t get it, we want to make it crystal clear. If you call consumers whose numbers are
on the Do Not Call Registry, you’re breaking the law,” said Eileen Harrington, acting director of the FTC’s consumer
protection unit.

@KarbonKopy: Yeah, what’s up with them? I’ve gotten to calls from them on my cell in the last week or so. Unfortunately they call while I’m still asleep so I haven’t had the opportunity to tell them to go to Hell yet.

@rugman11: I don’t tell them to go to hell…I keep them on the phone as long as possible, listening to their greed-infested drool drip on their telephone headset, until I get bored and tell them, “Okay, I really don’t have a 2002 Toyota. Never had one. I just wanted to see how long I could suck up your time.” I’ve been getting remarkably fewer calls lately…

I want the UK-style roving vans with direction-finding antennae and keyhole-satellites tasked solely with finding the Automotive Warranty people. Then when we find them, we dress ‘em up in AIG corporate-logo’d clothing and dump them out of a moving car in Time’s Square.

@KarbonKopy: This looks to me like the FTC going after the “soft” target, i.e. a real company that’s easy to find, rather than the blatant and widespread Auto Warranty abusers with the robodiallers, faked caller ID, and failure to remove people when asked. How many different parts of the code do those people have to be breaking before the FTC acts?

And incidentally, who is selling phone service to those people? Don’t they have some responsibility? Or do they just hold their noses and deposit the checks?

So no, I give the FTC no “warm and fuzzies” for this, regardless of who is right.

@KarbonKopy: I JUST got that call a few minutes ago. I asked them which car, since we have more than one, and they said it would have to be 2007 or newer, because factory warranties run out after three years.

Obviously I laughed to myself, because almost every car in the last fifteen years has had more than three years warranty, and ten years has been increasingly common for a long time now.

Then, since I had established they were scammers and had no business calling me, I introduced them to Mr. Air Horn. Mr. Air Horn has been handy to have around.

Good! I’ll never do business with Dish Network. Over the many years, I’ve gotten telemarketing calls and junk-faxes. That the FTC has sued them for illegal marketing methods comes as no surprise to me. I doubt it will be the last time, either.

I’ve been pulling a rather horrible game on the people who call my home wanting to sell me services. I answer the phone with: “Hello, you’ve reached the law offices of Neal & Dye. Where can I transfer your call?”
At this point, most of the little bastards mumble something about putting me on their do not call list and hang up.
For the robocalls, I go the extra mile because I *AM* an asshole. I follow the prompts to get to a person and inform them that they’re talking to “Mr. Neal” of the law firm of etc. etc. and I’d like their name, their physical address and the names of their supervisors so I may label them as defendants in the forthcoming lawsuit.

After about three weeks of this, my phone has been silent for many many days. :)

I do something similar. I get a real person on the line and then ask for this imaginary guy named Hank Rosco. I have this whole back story built up to waste their time. “He works in HR.” “This is the number he gave me, so it must be right.” “You know him, he works next to the fat and smelly lady.” Yada yada yada. I’ve once had one of those poor souls on the phone for over ten minutes before she finally hung up on me.

@Hoss: See, the nature of the beast is the people are shit scared they’ll be sued and off the number goes.
The only company to keep calling me was a Dish Network shill and I took them to small claims. Ka-ching: $500+court fees.
Annoying that the company hasn’t paid it yet, but victory nonetheless.

Pshh, I just get a human on the line, then gradually talk quieter and quieter until I’m almost whispering, then give them a nice blast with an air horn. Haven’t had a warranty robocall in over three months.

@RedSonSuperDave: While these solutions are funny, after you tell someone to put you on their do not call list you can take them to small claims and make money off them. There was a post a while back on doing this…every time they call it’s worth like 5 hundred bucks

@snowburnt: Yeah, but those “car warranty” assholes like to spoof their Caller ID information, and for some reason they’re reluctant to give out their real names or addresses, even if I pretend that I’m interested in what they have to sell.

I finally got some info from one of those car warranty calls. They’re Essex Information. I have more information jotted down on my desk at work like the location of their two call centers. Can we e-carpet bomb these a**holes?

@Enduro: “And in other news, a small family-run business named Essex Information that sells knitted phone-book covers reported today that their email server actually melted down and caught fire for unknown reasons…”

That’s why I cringe when people here suggest doing the vigilante thing. Sometimes you just might get it wrong and hurt the wrong people. Four hundred people probably googled these guys and started emailing them between the time of your first post and your correction five hours later.

I used to work for Dish (good way to pay for my college apt), and that was EXACTLY the script they used. While I worked there, I began getting these calls despite being on the do not call list, some harassing, and had NOTHING I could do about it. While I worked there (almost a year), I probably got 3 calls a shift about this, though one night I handled 20+ calls and felt like my hands were tied behind my back for trying to help people.

I have Dish and they raised my rates 5 dollars a month without notifying me prior to, which is stated in the contract. Also, when I login to my account online, it still gives me the option to select different services, and they are all at the original prices when I signed up, including the one I have. Is there something I can do to get my original rate back? Dish pissed me off with this, because according to the contract, they can raise the rate to whatever the hell they want and I still have to pay it.

They pulled this crap with me too. I asked the ESL-CSR from India if she knew the definition of a CONTRACT.

This was right after I reupped with them for 18 months to get the HD setup. We’ll see how the story changes when the contract is up in two months… I may even put an extra special present in the box when I ship the receivers back.

These guys starting to call me on a phone incessantly. I finally tracked the guys down and filed complaints with the NYAG, the FTC and the Flordia AG. I’m really glad they held Dish responsible for this scum.

thank god, their operators have been badgering my house constantly! my poor mom; she picks up the phone all the time and they choose to pick operators that exclusively speak mandarin and she has to tell each one off. xDDD